Handmade Does Not Mean Cheap!

I had so much fun on Wednesday when Amber, Christen, and I talked about all the handmade gifts we’ve given and received over the years. While some people may think handmade is the cheap way out, most of us who do a lot of crafting know that handmade items are anything but cheap, as there is a lot of time and effort that goes into making a handmade gift, and often the supplies to make them are anything but cheap. Skill, too, is a consideration, since a person can’t just simply decide to take up crochet and then whip out an afghan in a couple of days. And since handmade gifts are often specifically tailored to the recipient, there is a lot of thought and planning that goes into each gift.

One such example is the t-shirt quilts I’ve made for members of my family. I’ve done two so far, and have a good start on a couple more that I’ve shelved for the time being. Each of these projects took months of my limited craft time to cut and stabilize the t-shirts before I could even lay them out into something that looked like a planned and cohesive design. Then I had to find and purchase suitable fabric to use for the sashing, binding, and backing. The hours of sewing the blocks (called piecing) made for hours and hours of mindless sewing in front of the TV. Then the quilts had to be quilted, which is the process of sewing through multiple layers of the pieced quilt top (the t-shirts), batting (the inner layer that provides weight and warmth), and the backing (usually a solid piece or large blocks of coordinating fabric). For my husband’s rock bands quilt, I paid a quilter to sew it on her long-arm quilting machine, which cost almost $200. I chose to quilt my son’s school quilt myself on my used Brother sewing machine that I bought at an estate sale for $25. Let’s just say, you get what you pay for – the professionally sewn quilt has a beautiful design in a contrasting color of thread and is elegantly detailed.  The quilt I did at home took untold hours of work, has a lot of mistakes, and is not nearly as detailed since I just used an organic, wavy lines technique. Once the quilting was done, I was able to cut strips of binding (yet another coordinating fabric) and sew it around the edge of the quilt first by machine to attach it to the quilt, then by hand to finish it off. 

Don’t get me wrong, I do not regret spending the time, money, and effort on these quilts. I love the way they turned out, and I have plans to make several more, but this is why I get hot under the collar when people insinuate that a handmade gift is either cheap, easy, or a cop-out. The people who say that are the people who spend their time browsing Target or Kohl's or Amazon until they find something that will work, and then complain about handmade gifts because they have no idea how much time, thought, and effort goes into each one. It’s also the exact reason why I will NEVER make a quilt for hire. I get asked all the time how much I would charge to make a t-shirt quilt, and the answer is, “No! You can’t afford it, but I will teach you how to do it for yourself.” I feel the same about my hand-crocheted afghans like the NASCAR-themed ones I made for my Dad and my husband, Mark.

Along those lines, if you are interested in crocheting some handmade goodies for Christmas, I have a few free patterns available on my crochet website Cindy’s Crochet Pages. I have several patterns for easy/beginner items like neckwarmers (scarves), trivets, and washcloths plus more challenging patterns for a few NASCAR and sports-themed logos, as well as tutorials on some of the techniques I used.

I’d like to hear from you. Have you ever made handmade items as gifts? Were they received well? Has anyone ever insinuated that your handmade gifts were cheap or a cop-out? Leave your comments below, or join us in a discussion on our MMC Chat Facebook group. And don’t forget to listen to this week’s podcast!

TikTok Made Me Do it

It’s 2022. I hear this phrase all the time: “TikTok made me do it.” As I made my annual work gift sacks this year, I thought about that over and over. Last week, I was randomly scrolling on TikTok and I ran across this video “Gingerbread Latte” pour-overs by OneSweetMama and thought those would be the perfect gift to give my coworkers this year. Boy, I was wrong.

On the podcast this week, we are talking about handmade Christmas gifts. Every year, I make gift sacks for my coworkers. I put a lot of thought into making them, catering to each coworker. Last year, I bought a bunch of mini Christmas mugs from the store and filled them with different things such as snacks, mini lotion, and hand sanitizer. This year, I thought I’d take a step up and make the latte pour-overs for everyone and pair them with my annual pumpkin spice cake cookies. 

We mentioned on the podcast that sometimes handmade gifts can be more inexpensive to make than buying something. Generally, baked goods are not too expensive to make. The most expensive part of the pumpkin spice cookies that I make is the Lily’s® less sugar pumpkin spice chips that I use. However, I didn’t take into account everything it took to make these TikTok latte pour-overs. 

For starters, I had to buy a gingerbread silicone mold. While at Michael’s™, I also bought Sweet Tooth Fairy® vanilla candy melts. The recipe also called for a gingerbread spice blend and recommended one to buy online. However, I decided it might be cheaper to make my own (it wasn’t). The recipe also called for cinnamon (which I had) and instant dark roast coffee. I had only ever worked with candy melts a handful of times and every time I had, I usually burned them. So, I was very careful to get the melts to the right consistency before adding the rest of my ingredients to them. Working with a rack of silicone molds was difficult and I ended up making a mess getting the mixture into them. 

Gingerbread Spice Mix

My molds were also too small for what my recipe needed. The recipe told me to let them sit and harden in the refrigerator for 10 minutes (I waited for 20) and because the molds were smaller, they were also deeper, so, my test gingerbread bomb fell apart. The second one, I let sit overnight and I tried it the next morning. Man, was it strong!

My takeaway: working with candy melts is hard but practice makes perfect. The latte pour-overs in the small gingerbread molds came out sugary and strong. Next time, I will get larger molds. However, the flavors were amazing. If you use the small molds, I suggest eight ounces of hot water instead of six. The process was not as time-consuming as I thought it would be; however, it is a bit costly if you make your gingerbread spice from scratch. If you are looking for something inexpensive to make for your coworkers, I do not recommend this. If you are looking for a gift to give someone who loves coffee, I recommend this.

Finished Product

I want to hear from our readers. What handmade gifts do you like to give for the holidays? Have you ever tried making latte bombs before? How did it go? Let’s continue the conversation below!

Recipes linked below:

Gingerbread Latte Pour-overs

Gingerbread Spice Mix

Please check out our Downloads For Our Readers page for a PDF of these recipes.

The Secret Is...

In this week's podcast, we talked about the seven secrets to a perfect holiday. The word “perfect” is relative. I’ve learned over the years that perfect doesn’t exist if you set your expectations too high. Something will always go wrong. I want to say the biggest secret in my mind is that there is no secret to a perfect holiday.

One of the most memorable holidays I had with my family was one of those holidays where everything seemed to go wrong. I call it the “Great Pumpkin Disaster.” That year, my grandmother, my mom, and I decided to make a trio of pumpkin desserts: Pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, and pumpkin cupcakes. 

My grandmother is a perfectionist when it comes to all things pumpkin. She is always the one to make the pumpkin desserts. In fact, she never lets anyone in the kitchen when she is cooking. On the flip side, she won’t let anyone cook in the kitchen without her (because it is her kitchen). So, it was nearly impossible to cook your own recipe without her input. That being said, maybe I could have used her input that Christmas, but I was always irritated when I tried to cook in the kitchen and she constantly hovered over me. My grandmother used to say, “Too many cooks in the kitchen...”

My mom and I cooked first working on our pumpkin bread and cupcakes while kicking my grandma out of the kitchen multiple times. I love making cupcakes and it was the first time I had ever made pumpkin cupcakes. The result was pretty disappointing. My cupcakes sank in the middle and only a few turned out edible. I didn’t understand what was wrong. It had to be something wrong with my grandmother’s oven, but no one believed me. Next, my mom’s pumpkin bread came out of the oven as hard as a brick but still, no one believed me that there was something wrong with the oven. My grandmother claimed it was because we wouldn’t let her help us.

Finally, my grandmother made her pumpkin pies, and they almost caught fire in the oven, leading to hysteria in the kitchen as we prepped for Christmas dinner. My grandmother didn’t want to believe that it was an oven problem and swore that it was because she wasn’t cooking. When she pulled the pies out of the oven, they were completely black. My mom and I busted out laughing at the situation. My grandmother got so angry that she took a piece of my mom’s “brick” pumpkin bread and threw it at her head. My mom, in return, grabbed a cupcake and threw it at my grandma. That turned into an all-out war in the kitchen and throughout the house. We started chasing each other and throwing bits of pumpkin at each other until all three of us were covered and we had a huge mess to clean up.

I think back to that day whenever I bake any of my grandmother’s pumpkin recipes. We had to buy our dessert that year, but the memories of that Christmas with my mom and grandma will last a lifetime.

I want to hear from our readers. What is your perfect holiday? What are your holiday secrets? Let’s continue the conversation below. Have a wonderful holiday!

My 7 Secrets for a Perfect Holiday

 

My Thanksgiving Day schedule on the fridge. Next to the stove, you can see my recipes on a stand.

Have you noticed how time seems to fly when we get close to the holiday season? This is my favorite time of year, and yet I seem to always be running around like a chicken with my head cut off, trying to get everything done, and getting flustered, flummoxed, and frustrated in the process. If you can relate, then I am here to tell you it doesn’t have to be that way, and I think I’ve found the secret to making any holiday just about perfect.

Like many families, the last few years around here have been fraught with change…COVID, unemployment, extra family members living with us, illness, death…we’ve survived it all, and it has changed the way we look at Christmas (or any holiday for that matter). At some point, I just gave up trying to be the perfect hostess presenting the perfect dinner in a perfect house with all the perfect touches for a perfect event. Where does this idea of perfection come from anyway? I think we’ve all been watching too many Hallmark movies! Although I truly do know better than to expect perfection, there is something in me that has this “perfect” picture of the holidays in my head and I’ll be darned if I’m not going to try and accomplish it! 

A few years ago, I finally figured out that I can’t do it all on my own, and I enlisted the help of my daughter, Christen (who you know from this blog and the podcast), and my niece, Ashley. One early fall day, we enjoyed happy hour at our local Chuy’s and decided to plan our holiday festivities, nailing down any and every detail we could think of along with assigning a person to be responsible for it. It was nothing that I hadn’t done before, but having it all spelled out in writing and with two other family members to back it up, it carried weight.  We planned it together. Who was going to challenge that?

Those first couple of years were focused on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and many of the activities in our “plan” involved baking days, crafting days, and even some movie-watching and game-playing days. As each day rolled around, we found it was easy to know what was supposed to happen and when so most things went off without a hitch. After each holiday, we would regroup, make notes about what worked and what didn’t, and set it aside for the next year. This planning has become our routine and has been amazingly effective even through COVID and all the aforementioned changes. And because of the success of all this planning, I was able to discover what I call my 7 Secrets of a Perfect Holiday. 

1. Be realistic. 

When you look at what you want to accomplish realistically, you may find that what you want isn’t just a challenge – it can be impossible. Pick and choose what you really want to include, and learn to say “no” to anything that goes beyond that.  

When my family started planning, we quickly realized that some family activities just weren’t going to happen when we are all  together, so we opted for going our separate ways for things like visits with Santa and driving around looking at lights. We also quickly realized that to have all of our Christmas baking and decorating done in time to enjoy it, we had to start working on it the weekend after Thanksgiving. Now, baking and decorating on that Saturday is part of our Thanksgiving/Christmas ritual.

2. Make a plan.

Once you know what is most important to you, start planning it out. Think about all the details like time constraints, supplies needed, and who will be responsible for each part. Plan out the menu for your meals and then break the recipes down into little steps that are scheduled throughout the day or even the day before.

Knowing that we are going to make cornbread dressing on Thursday for Thanksgiving, we knew that we had to bake the cornbread on Monday so it could dry out to bread crumbs. I made pies the day before. Then, for the day of our feast, I start at the time I would like to serve dinner and work my way back through all of the recipes so that everything is done and ready to serve at exactly the right time. If a recipe calls for chopping celery, I mark on the plans who will be chopping. In this way, every person knows exactly what they are doing and when…right down to setting the table, changing clothes, and putting on make-up.

3. Delegate.

This was one of the hardest things for me to do. I’m a control freak, and to allow someone else to do something that I am perfectly capable of doing (especially when I have a specific way I want it done) is darned near impossible, but I’ve learned to do it. I realized some while back that the other women in the family are never going to learn how to do things unless I allow them to do it and learn, and someday it will be up to them to carry on our family traditions. I owe it to them to bring them in on the process – to teach them the way. It has been a lifesaver for me. Learning to let go and let someone else do it allows me to focus on other aspects of the holiday like baking my special recipe or coordinating all the other helpers. This year, more than half of our Thanksgiving dishes were made by someone other than me, and my brother and niece set the tables.

4. Lower your expectations.

This can be hard, too, especially if you have some kind of Norman Rockwell/Hallmark movie picture of what Christmas (or any other holiday) should be like. Remember that 70% rule Christen talked about a while back? It applies here, too. If you can manage to get 70% of what you hope to accomplish, I’m betting you’re going to have a great holiday. And remember that delegating thing? Don’t expect too much of your helpers, either. It’s perfectly okay if your niece sets the table with the forks and knives on the wrong sides of the plates. No one cares. Really. No one cares.

5. Be in the moment.

If I learned anything from our adventure reading Eckhart Tolle’s, A New Earth, it is this – be in the moment. The moment is now. Now is all there is. Make the most of what you have. Enjoy it. Be fully present. 

This was never more evident in our family than this past Thanksgiving. My brother and his family came to visit, and rather than change our plans, we decided to just bring them in on all the fun. For Saturday, the plan was to rise early, eat some donuts and start decorating my tree. In the afternoon, we were going to start some of our baking and take turns at building gingerbread houses. If there was enough time in the evening, we would either play a game or do some crafting. But things change. Christen wasn’t in the mood for donuts, so she brought breakfast burritos, too (a big hit with everyone), and we were having so much fun visiting with my sister-in-law and doing some crafting that we never did decorate the tree. In the end, the “boys” played a game while we crafted, and then we all got in on the gingerbread houses, taking turns at the dining room table. It was all good fun, and while I wished I had gone to bed that evening with a fully-decorated tree, it didn’t kill me to do it the next day. The point is that we were in the moment, enjoying what was, and not worrying about what was supposed to be. I wouldn’t trade those hours of crafting and talking with Lisa for the world.

6. Stick to your budget.

This may sound super obvious, but budgets have a very real and valuable purpose, and that is to keep us out of trouble! It’s very tempting to shop for groceries for a dinner and add one more side dish or appetizer, or to discover one more gift for someone that you think you must give. I am so guilty of this! Especially when it comes to gift-giving. I will find the perfect gift for someone and then the very next day find another little something that would be perfect for that person. But, oops, if I buy one more for this person, then I need to find another little something for that person, and it just keeps adding up. I love using things like Amazon Wish Lists to buy gifts because I can quickly tally how much I’ve spent on each person and stick to my budget. It’s a lot safer for me than just randomly milling through stores looking for something. Santa has the right idea; make a list, check it twice, and stick to it! There’s nothing worse than overspending on a meal or gifts and then eating beans and rice for the next month just to pay for it.

7. Stick to your routines.

This last little tidbit is more about self-care than anything else. Often, when we are caught up in the hustle and bustle of the holidays, we tend to overlook things like our diet, exercise routines, and even sleep. Be sure to stick to your regular sleep schedule as much as possible (even when you have company!), and don’t give up on those exercise routines. A morning work-out, evening meditation, or that wonderful soak in a hot tub might be just the thing to help you keep the stress at bay. As for that diet…well, we all over-indulge once in a while, so just be mindful and don’t make it another habit that you’re going to have to change come January 1.

That’s my secret to having a perfect holiday. I’d like to know what you think. Do you have any tips to share with our readers? Be sure to listen to the podcast on Wednesday to hear what Christen and Amber have to say!

My, How Time Flies!

Welcome to another week of the Modern Musings podcast and blog. If you’ve been listening to the podcast, you’ve probably heard us tell the tale of how Amber, Christen, and I had each thought about hosting a blog, vlog, or podcast of some sort, and how we came to the inspiration of doing one together. That was about a year ago, and it feels like a whirlwind came along and swept us off our feet, because here we are, counting down the days until we launch our 50th episode this Wednesday. Yes, you read that right – FIFTY episodes!

Somehow, while we were busy recording, editing, writing, posting, and living our lives, we managed to launch 50 episodes (that’s counting all the bonus ones like Eckhart Tolle and “Excuse Me While I Read My Tarot”), and we are simply amazed at how quickly the time has flown by. For the podcast this week, we thought it might be fun to share a “look” back at some of the hits and misses, laughter, tears, and even snoozes that happened while we were busy having all this fun. We’ve talked about a lot of different topics in that time, and many things have happened and changed since that magical day last November when we launched that less- than-impartial discourse about December Daily. I thought now might be a good time to fill you in on those changes and updates, and maybe talk a little bit about what’s coming up.

To get us started, I want to circle back to where it all began – with December Daily. I told you when we started this thing, I am obsessed with December Daily. I’d have to be, right? Only someone obsessed would talk about a one-month project all year long. But I swear, I am not the only one! A quick search on Facebook reveals 20+ groups, both public and private, before I quit scrolling, the largest of which is the “official” group with upwards of 13,000 members. Likewise, a quick look on Instagram revealed more than 20 hashtags that I know are linked to the project, with likely dozens if not hundreds more that I don’t know about – the most popular among them being the simplest #decemberdaily with 366,000+ posts.

One of the reasons we started with December Daily was because of timing. Christen and I wanted to share our enthusiasm for this project, and it just so happened that a December Daily event was going to occur on November 6 – the Saturday after our first podcast launch. But really, the excitement for December Daily begins for us in August, when Ali Edwards, the creator of this phenomenon, announces the launch date for her line of December Daily products. And that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to talk about it here, today. As of this writing, my cohorts and I are eagerly awaiting the introduction of her new products so that we can jump online on release day (August 31 here) and scramble to grab all the merchandise we want for our album projects before it sells out. It’s a big game of hurry-up and wait because the products won’t even ship until some time in October. Once we receive our orders, we have to wait some more until November, when the classes launch. From then on, we are working on our albums, often setting up pages in advance so that all we have to do is add photos and a bit of journaling when December rolls around. 

That’s the plan, anyway, but I always seem to wind up so busy that I get behind about mid-December, and then it takes several more months to get it finished. In fact, I didn’t finish my 2021 December Daily  album until June (watch for a YouTube flip-through coming soon), and some participants deliberately hold off on finishing, dragging it out all year so as to be “done by December” in time to start again. I admit, December Daily may not be it for everyone, but it definitely is a big deal to a lot of crafters, and it’s something I look forward to all year, which is why you’ll hear me reference it a lot. 

Three other topics that we talk about on the podcast from time to time are our One Little Word projects, Happy Planners, and Cultivate What Matters PowerSheets®. All of these projects also have fall “launch” dates that enable participants to purchase kits and supplies in advance of the new year. I like to get my planners and PowerSheets® set up and ready to go by the end of December so I can get right to work on January 1. I also usually choose my word of the year in the fall, so that I’m ready to start living my word with the new year. I’m already starting to think about my word options for next year, and I’m thinking I may take Christen’s lead in choosing something a little less challenging for 2023. The last few words have been a lot of work for me, and while they’ve brought about a lot of change in my life and my outlook on life, I think it might be time to look at something more fun or easy. Alternatively, I might try something like create or craft, which both have multiple meanings but embrace the idea of digging into my art a little more purposefully. I’m sure we’ll do another reveal sometime in the fall and we hope you’ll share your words with us, too!

Rereading “A New Earth” by Eckhart Tolle was not in my original plans for 2022, but what a powerful book this has been in my life this past year! When I first read it, I felt like so much finally made sense, and I was so excited to share it with Christen and Amber (and with the world) that it was worth reading again, this time with a more studious eye. I often worried that it was just a bit too much because we presented it in such a drawn-out way. There was so much information, so many concepts, and such deep thoughts that it sometimes felt like we were just shoveling it into a big heap on top of our listeners. I can only hope that as you read along with us, you were able to decipher what we felt so challenged to share. I only know that it has been an instrument of profound change in my life, more on which I will share at another time. 

Now, as we head into fall, I am excited and looking forward to all these familiar patterns, routines, and habits, but I am also looking forward to all the fun topics we have coming up in the next 50 episodes and beyond. Amber, Christen, and I sat down a few weeks ago and started brainstorming new ideas for topics in 2023, and I’m really excited about all the conversations we’re going to have about everything from Disney Princesses to menopause, and from horror movies to making your bed. It’s going to be interesting. We hope you’ll hang around to share it with us.

Share your thoughts about our first 50 episodes below or join us on Facebook in our MMC Chat group.

Celebrating the Wheel of the Year Your Own Way

Hi everyone, it is Christen here! This week on the podcast we discussed what being Pagan actually means to us and our own experiences related to Paganism. I will start off by mentioning that I believe the word Pagan or Paganism should be capitalized and if you want to know why, please go here. Now that I got that off my chest,  I thought it would be fun to talk about a couple of favorite sabbats, and talk about creating new ones for you and your family.

Like so many other people in America, I enjoy Christmas and Halloween. I am sure that I have mentioned before that the time from mid-October to January is my favorite time of the year. I have also mentioned my favorite holiday traditions in a previous blog post. Christmas has reigned champion for the past few years, but for the longest time, Halloween was my most favorite time. I loved the haunted houses, scary movies, fall carnivals, trick-or-treating in costume, and decorating my home - all traditions that have been passed on from my family or integrated by me.

In recent years, the Day of the Dead has become more prevalent in American culture, especially here in Texas. I have been fortunate to experience the celebrations, and I have taken some of the traditions within this holiday and married it with my own Samhain traditions which are similar in some ways.

If you are interested in learning about the eight Wiccan holidays, I highly recommend the book The Sabbats: A Witch's Approach to Living the Old Ways by Edain McCoy. This book breaks down each of the sabbats by explaining from who and where the traditions came, why these specific times of the year were celebrated, and how you can celebrate them at home. The part that I like the most, is that the traditions are focused on celebrating the wheel of the year or the turning of the seasons. I truly enjoy embracing the seasons and the activities that are enjoyed during that time.

Sometimes celebrations take planning though, or they will just zoom right past you and you will have your hands full and can’t celebrate. And that is why Mom and I are always planning out fun family activities. Once we have done something twice, we consider it a tradition, and, if you do it a specific way every time, then it’s a ritual. I have had serious thoughts about making my own traditions that correlate with the wheel of the year. That's why I am positive I will be picking up Llewellyn's 2023 Magical Almanac this year when it comes out (I mentioned it back when we were discussing astrology). I still believe strongly that we should honor the earth and celebrate the harvest and those who till the earth, and also honor those who have left this earth, and I feel that we should instill those values with our youth, but in these modern times, I feel that the celebrations need to be customized to our current environment. I mean, I do not see a maypole anywhere on Beltane, the celebration of spring and growth on May 1st, so we just have to improvise.

Here is some food for thought: National Taco Day is a celebration of our adoration of tacos; we are not worshiping them by any means, but in a sense we are thankful for the blessing of this delicious cuisine. In doing so, we are creating a holiday tradition, with a ritual. We are in essence creating and celebrating a Pagan holiday, simply because it is not a religious orthodox celebration. In that case, bring on the Pagan holidays, I will have as many of them as I can possibly fill my calendar up with! 

Do you have any family traditions that could be considered Pagan? Have you ever participated in any of the Wiccan holidays? I would love to hear from you! Be sure to comment below or join in on the conversation over in our MMC Chat group on Facebook!

Resistance is Futile

“Resistance is futile.” Pardon my inner geek as I appropriate this “Borg” catch-phrase from TV’s Star Trek, but I just couldn’t resist. Some could argue that no truer words have ever been spoken. In his book, A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle talks about the detrimental effects of resisting change versus yielding to it, and we’ve talked a bit about that on the two-part podcast episode that we wrapped up today. In our discussion, we mentioned Tolle’s belief that there are only two options for coping with change, trauma, grief, and other life-altering events; you can resist, and thus remain stuck in the negativity that comes with it, or you can yield and pass through it, which can actually make you stronger in the long run.

Resistance requires energy. Resistance consumes resources. You can’t keep fighting without exerting tremendous amounts of energy and burning through resources. Think about an army that needs manpower, food, weapons, armor, and the money to buy those things. A successful army needs morale. So, too, does resistance to change…to grief, to trauma, to progress. The more a person fights these changes, the more energy and emotional resources they expend on it, the more angry, exhausted, and negative that person becomes. All that negativity takes its toll (no pun intended). Negativity rebounds as anger, stress, physical ailments, isolation, blame, and what some might call bad luck or karma.

But what does it mean to yield? The New Oxford American Dictionary has several definitions that apply. In the first sense, to yield is to produce or provide a product, generate a (financial) gain, or to deliver a result or gain. This is certainly true of many kinds of change when you look at the bigger picture. What do I have to gain from this? What message does this teach me? What positive outcomes have occurred because of this? In another sense, to yield is to give way to arguments, demands or pressure, to relinquish possession, to give something up, to cease to argue about, or to give something (as in traffic) the right of way. In this form, yielding is the act of going through the trauma or the change and coming out the other side, much in the same sense as Christen described going through the Swamps of Sadness in the Neverending Story without becoming part of the swamp. 

It should be noted that to yield often has a temporary connotation. When we yield to traffic, we give up our right of way until it is safe to proceed. It is not the same as giving up or giving in, which is what happened to Artax when he and Atreyu went through the Swamps of Sadness. When making that distinction, I like to think about quicksand. It is common knowledge that panicked flailing (resistance)  in quicksand can rapidly make the situation much worse, but the answer isn’t to give up either, because then you’ll just sink and suffocate. The answer is to move slowly and deliberately. Toss away anything you can to make yourself lighter. Keep your hands above the sand as much as possible. Reach carefully, for a branch or a helping hand, and pull yourself to safety. By accepting and adapting to the situation, you can move through it and come out the other side. Life is the same way.

Last month, I got a little first-hand experience in yielding. I’ve talked about my love for Christmas and holiday traditions of all kinds. I have some pretty well-defined notions of what that is supposed to look like, and because of the upheaval of the last few years, I’ve taken it upon myself to try and make those holiday experiences as normal as possible, which hasn’t been easy. My Christmas merry-making starts the day after Thanksgiving when my husband sets up the Christmas tree and gets all the decorations out of the shed. In recent years, Christen, her daughter, Reyna, and I spend that Saturday listening to Christmas carols and adorning our family tree. It’s part of the ritual and it helps set the holiday mood.

Unfortunately, this year, we were in the midst of home renovations that were supposed to be completed before Thanksgiving, but actually didn’t even get going full-swing until mid-December. We dutifully cleared out half of our belongings in preparation, and thinking the project would resume any day, we were reluctant to put up the tree or start any decorating for fear we’d have to take it all down. They finally finished the flooring on December 22nd, and they informed us they would not be back until after the 1st of the year to finish the rest (yes, they are still working on it as I write). So here we sat, on December 22 with no tree, no stockings, and I really didn’t even feel much like celebrating Christmas at all. My niece, Ashley, kept telling me she was going to print a photo of a tree and pin it to my wall if I didn’t do something. I wanted my Christmas to look a certain way, and if I couldn’t have it the way I wanted it, well then, I just wasn’t going to have it at all. I was resisting the change, and I was making myself miserable in the process. To make matters worse, my bah-humbug attitude wasn’t just affecting me…it was felt by everyone in the house.

Ashley's cute little tree.

Ashley was the one who had the answer that turned it all around. She wasn’t asking for my tree…she just wanted a tree. And so a tree we gave her. I had a small tree that I usually set up in my kitchen, and I put Ashley in charge of decorating it. I found some fairy lights I had bought for my craft room. One set was broken and didn’t work, so we cut off the battery pack and used the wire-strung bobbles as a garland on the tree. The other set was so long it covered the tree twice. Rather than pull out my fragile ornaments for this wobbly little pine, we used another goodie from my craft room – a pile of pompoms I had been making for a garland. Ashley tied them all over the tree. It was very cute in its own Charlie Brown sort of way.

Creamy pumpkin soup in fine china on the patio.

I don’t tell you this to brag about how cute this sad little tree came out, but rather, to illustrate the point of yielding. In the end, we wound up decorating my back porch with lights, setting up a few folding tables with pretty tablecloths and my fine china to enjoy a fantastic dinner with family and friends. I won’t say it was all smooth sailing; I definitely had a little meltdown when I got frustrated with my husband, Mark, for not doing what I asked. It wasn’t the Christmas I imagined, but it was good. The weather was perfect (we were in the ’80s here), it looked nothing like my traditional Christmas feast, and it just felt right for this time in our lives. 

Stockings hung on the banister instead of their usual place.

The lesson I learned is that resisting the change only made me (and everyone else around me) miserable. When I embraced the change, found a way to work through it, not by insisting on doing it exactly as we’ve always done (resistance), nor by giving up (staying miserable by refusing to yield to the change), but by really embracing the singularity and uniqueness of the situation, we all found a happy place within the change. We found happiness in what is…in “now”. 

Acceptance – yielding to what is – is not a form of defeat. In fact, it is the only way to win. A battle is not won on defensive maneuvers alone. Winning requires acknowledging our circumstances, accepting our situation, and adapting to it. To make the most of what we have, and to keep moving forward…to remember the objective. To not give in or give up, and certainly not to keep struggling to make things happen on our terms. A good general knows this. The Borg know this. 

So the next time you are in an untenable situation, the next time life throws you a curveball, step back, take stock, and ask yourself, “How can I move through this? How can I yield? How can I turn this to my advantage?” Because to fight it, to resist, will only make you (and those around you) miserable. Remember, resistance is futile.

The tree with gifts for scale.

Christmas lights strung between the trees
made this very pretty after dark.